"Mademoiselle Gay did not then give you the canto of her poem on the Magdalene where the devil, to tempt the saint, takes on the form of Joseph of Arimathea?" inquired the Duchesse that evening. "That must, ma foi, be very striking, and I regret that I have never even read it."
CHAPTER VI
(1)
"O temps, suspends ton vol, et vous, heures propices,
Suspendez votre cours!
Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices
Des plus beaux de nos jours!"
—sang M. Alphonse de Lamartine to the Comtesse Armand de la Roche-Guyon from the beautifully bound copy of Les Meditations which, with his just-published Harmonies, Horatia had found in her room. A line from Emmanuel had asked her to please him by accepting them. And, having turned over the new poems, she had reverted to that earlier and famous elegy over past happiness, Le Lac, and its passion and melancholy had sent her into a half reverie.
How kind, how thoughtful, Emmanuel was! This gift could be but the outcome of his knowledge of her desire for personal acquaintance with the poet. He could not give her that, and Armand would not.
"My dear child," the latter had said, "it is quite out of the question. If you want to see M. Victor Hugo, Dumas, de Vigny, and this young de Musset, you must go to the sort of club they have at Charles Nodier's, the Cénacle I think they call it—and, of course, you cannot do that. Comte Alfred de Vigny does belong to our world, it is true, but he hardly goes anywhere. But as for these Gautiers and Balzacs, where do you expect to find them? In some dingy lodgings in the Quarter, not anywhere that you are likely to visit!"
"But a great many ladies of your world, as you call them, have literary salons, surely," pleaded Horatia.
"Like the one the other day? No, not many are left now, and what there are are mostly Orleanist."
"What about Madame Récamier?" suggested Horatia. "Would not the presence of Monsieur de Chateaubriand be a guarantee of right principles?"